At the same time, cold Arctic air was moving behind the cold front from the north. A closed circulation developed and pressure fell by 40mbs in 36 hours reaching 987mb by the 8th and was centred over the SE of England. Heavy preciptation fell over the Midlands and the Peninnes, this fell as snow over the highest parts but at low levels, it was initially rain. With Arctic air moving along the western flank, the rain rapidly turned into snow and since temperatures were fractionally above freezing the snow was wet. The rate of snowfall was high about 6cm an hour and as result many areas were snow covered within half an hour of the snow starting to fall.

The rate of pressure fall caused the winds to increase and across the Midlands, the winds reached gale force causing blizzard conditions and drifting snow.

Transport was severely disrupted and many people were trapped in their cars on the M5 and M6 motorways as well as numerous A roads in the Midlands.

The NEC in Birmingham was used as a haven for rescued drivers. Many parts of the Midlands reported at least 20cm of level snow and there were depths of 60cm in the Derby area and there were drifts of up to 3.7m. In the centre of Birmingham itself depths were approaching 30cm.

The economic impact of the snowstorm was huge. The Saturday takings for stores and shops were well down compounded by the fact that it was three weeks to Christmas.

650,000 people were without electricity and about 1.2 million were without water. All rail services in the Midlands were cancelled. Within 4 days most of the snow had gone

The unsetteld weather continued into the New Year. On the 5th and 6th of January 1991, a vigorous low tracked across northern Scotland bringing severe gales along its southern flank across Ireland, England and Wales. There were gusts up to 70mph+ and these brought down trees and power lines. Thousands of homes were blacked out across Ireland and the southwest, the same areas that were just recovering from the Christmas 1990 storm.

13 people died as a result of the gales, 7 in Ireland when a tree crashed onto a minibus.

High pressure was to more or less to dominate the rest of that January

February 1991 was a cold and wintry month with heavy snowfalls and very low maxima across many parts of the UK. This was far removed from the last three winters and was the coldest spell for the UK since January 1987. The CET for the month was 1.5C

The month began with a trough across the UK bringing heavy showery rain to the south but snowfalls to northern England.

Maxima were very low between -5 and -6C in many southern areas, Guersney Airport recorded a maximum of just -7.2C. Depths of snow was widely approaching 10cm+ across England with drifting in the easterly wind. The snow brought travel chaos particularly on the trains, where British Rail made the legendary excuse that the chaos was caused by the wrong type of snow.

Villages on Exmoor were cut off by drifts approaching 2m. Cars were abandoned on roads and motorways as they became impassable to the drifting snow. Canals and ponds began to freeze and skating became possible. Parts of the shoreline of the Bristol Channel froze as did the Norfolk Broads and parts of Swansea Bay. Power lines in the SE were brought down in the blizzards causing blackouts.

By the 8th, conditions were severe over many areas with depths of snow approaching 20cm in a number of areas. Hampstead recorded 25cm of level snow, St James's Park in central London 20cm, probably the deepest snow there since December 1962, Bingley, West Yorkshire 47cm, Pencelli in Powys 35cm. With low pressure to the south and a trough across the UK, heavy snow showers and longer spells of snow fell throughout most of the 8th.

There was another severe frost on the night of the 8th and 9th with minima down to -10C but conditions had eased slightly on the 9th as the snow showers were less heavy and frequent but it was still very cold with maxima around

-4C.

The weather had relented a little more on the 10th and temperatures rose just above freezing in the sunshine but snow showers continued in the east giving fresh falls. At night however, the frosts were at their severest with minima as low as -15C being recorded.

A low pressure moved into western areas on the 12th with rain but as this engaged the cold air it turned readily to snow and gave a fresh covering to eastern areas. Stansted Airport was closed at one stage because of heavy snow and depths here were approaching 24cm.

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Thanks Mr Data, this was Sandown Bay 1991, snow on the beech, frozen water pipes and a lovely ice days( i say days there was more than one i think(?) with fine powdery snow blowing around, Is what i remember most. I cant remember the exact date i took the picture

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Brilliant report as usual. Agree with Canadian Rocky North Downs had over 40cm and extremly cold. Had to work in London one evening and the snow was at least 20cm with no sign sign of melt which is very unusual. Dont know if I put my son off snow but when I took him out in our

back garden he disappeared for a couple of seconds when he fell over and a mouth full of snow to add to his misery.

Do you think when a true Easterly blows the South East is often the worse hit and can have the coldest weather- seems to of only happened twice in my life time 1987 60cm on the Downs(Central London had a max of -7c min -9c on the coldest day) and 1991 45cm .

I follow the charts but in a very amaturish way but I seem to remember I think it was in 1981 the South was forecast to have 10cm of snow from a fast moving front from the West -when this passed I thought oh well the snows finished but about 3 hours later it started again and and another 12cm of snow fell with a strong Easterly wind , I remember on the telly the forcaster saying the original front had stalled as it hit very cold air in the East and the front then moved back across the South East. Total snow was about 22cm . This must be very unusual.

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Ah the memories I was 14 at the time and it was the last time school was shut because of the snow - now of course they shut schools if there is a cm of snow :lol:

The snow came in the early hours and then every few days we seemed to get a top up of fresh snow, when school finally resumed I remember a games lesson wearing our rugby kits and being allowed to go up the local hill and sled down on what ever we had to hand which was invarably plastic bags. By this time the snow was quite hard and icy and hurt like hell when only wearing shorts and it took about an hour to thaw out afterwards

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I lived in Nottingham at the time and remember it very very well, it was chucking it down with rain the previous night, I remember 'Charlie' the Central TV weathergirl forecasting more rain for overnight. Surprised as hell when I woke up to amazingly deep snow, power lines down - total whiteout!

Didn't take long for the Radio Trent FM snowline to start! Went on all weekend it did and reported widespread school closures from the sunday evening etc..

Not seen anything like it since and it's scary to think that if I have to wait another 16 years I'll be in my 50's!!! :unsure:

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Urgh. I was staying at my parents' home in E Sussex at the time (off sick with a bout of shingles in the face which meant that going out in the cold was an absolute no, no, no): they didn't have double glazing or central heating and every morning there were icicles trailing down inside the windows and down the walls. Dad measured (I think) -10C or below (-15C a couple of times) about 10 nights in a row. There wasn't actually that much snow, it was just very, very, very cold.

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I was commuting by cycle in 1991, a 33 mile round trip each day,and remember some of the most uncomfortable journeys I 've ever experienced. Apart from it being pitch dark with icy or snow covered roads I also got frostbitten extremeties, whilst doing 20-25 mph in a temperature of -8 to -12c, and I don't just mean fingers and toes! Extremely painful. I needed no reminding after that to put plenty of newspaper inside the cycling gear to cut out the wind.

Having experienced what was, apparantly, mild frostbite I can't imagine the pain associated with severe frostbite, I'll leave that to the arctic explorers and the mountaineers.

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Thankyou for writing this. I remember the December event vividly, despite being just 7 years old. My own little tale...

I remember having caught a BBC forecast on Thursday evening with the possibility of snow from the Friday into Saturday.

I went to school the next day and watched out for the snow all day, telling my friends what was about to happen. Alas, nothing happened and I was so disappointed. It came to about 2:30 and my teacher (Mr Jones) let us do some drawing for half an hour before home time. I drew a picture of an igloo in the falling snow, with the words 'Snow Patrol' on a sign next to it. I was concentrating drawing this with my charcoal stick when a friend said it was snowing.

I recall the whole class being hyper as we went out of school to meet our parents at the gate. I spent the evening watching the snow fall, and eventually went to bed.

The following morning (8th), I woke up and went straight to the window to see how much snow we had. I ran into my parents room and woke them up, making them get out of bed to look at what was outside. I can still remember the huge snowflakes swirling through the air onto the foot of laying snow. I couldn't wait to get out there, but my mum insisted I had breakfast first! Kellogs frosties were consumed in record time.

I played out in the snow from about 8:30am until 9:00pm (which included walking to Safeways with my family to bring the weekly shop home on my wooden sled). The evening light was mystical with the orange glow of the snow under the street lights. That day was perfect, and I shall never forget it.

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Feels a bit strange reminiscing about winters past in the middle of summer, but anyhow, yes I have very vivid memories of the Dec snow event, even though we never saw much settle, I remember the ferocity of the wind it was a true blizzard. My friend and I went to the local park on our bikes, I remember the wind kept pushing us backwards (location: Windermere). The winter as a whole was a good one whilst not a truely cold one, it was a proper wintry season.

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I can never remember an good winter, this was all a year before I was born. :lol:

Its amazing to see such sustained northerly or easterly shots, nowadays set ups like that with LP to the South and HP to the North seem hard to come by.

If only we had Northerly or Easterly blasts in winter as frequently as we have southerly plumes in summer.

We have had blasts of northerly and easterly airstreams in winters since particularly Nov 1993, Feb 1994, Dec 1995, late Jan 96, Feb/Mar 96, Dec 96, Jan 97, Jan/Feb/Mar 01 in bits and bits in Feb/Mar 05 and late Nov 05, late Feb/early Mar 06. However, not since Feb 1991 have we seen a sustained severe spell of wintry weather from the east, nor a cold arctic continental airstream from the NE, the closest we have come being Dec 95 and we were on the verge of such a spell in Jan 06. In recent years the most sustained coldest weather has come courtesy if anticyclonic conditions directly overhead think last December and Dec 06.

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Alot of posts regarding this cold spell on the forums at the moment, So I thought id bring this back up the forum abit :lol: Lots of you tube videos of the event flying around at the moment one of which is here. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qc49oYbAIr4

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Thankyou for writing this. I remember the December event vividly, despite being just 7 years old. My own little tale...

I remember having caught a BBC forecast on Thursday evening with the possibility of snow from the Friday into Saturday.

The following morning (8th), I woke up and went straight to the window to see how much snow we had. I ran into my parents room and woke them up, making them get out of bed to look at what was outside. I can still remember the huge snowflakes swirling through the air onto the foot of laying snow. I couldn't wait to get out there, but my mum insisted I had breakfast first! Kellogs frosties were consumed in record time.

I played out in the snow from about 8:30am until 9:00pm (which included walking to Safeways with my family to bring the weekly shop home on my wooden sled). The evening light was mystical with the orange glow of the snow under the street lights. That day was perfect, and I shall never forget it. :lol:

I can vouch for that perfectly. I remember the Friday evening it was raining quite heavily. Still raining by the time I went to bed at around 11:30pm that night.

On the Saturday morning, it looked a bit bright outside from behind the curtains. (This being about 9:00am) so went to take a look and WOW!! Where did all that come from?? Had I known that it would have been that bad overnight, I would have done an all night vigil watching what must have been one of the heaviest overnight snowfalls that I could have possibly ever recalled.

There was a foot of lying snow drifting in what was literally white out conditions. The heavy snow continued up until about 5pm. But I'll also never forget going out to the corner shop, knee deep in the white stuff and watching occasional bright blue flashes to my south which must have been the overhead pylons sparking off.

What happened was, and I remember the ITV Central News and ITV weather forecasts stating that the area of PPN had got 'stuck' over East Anglia, The Midlands and into much of East Wales.

You know since then, no snowfall has even come close to that memorable day.

That was 17 years ago. Will such an extreme event ever occur again? Hard to say but I doubt it. :lol:

Downloadable weather forecasts from years gone by. (Realplayer required) Just click on the options to see faces past and present, plus brief descriptions on how the TV weather broadcasts have changed over time. B)

Phil.

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Here it snowed heavily on Thursday 31st January 1991, and this snow stuck in the shade for at least a week, with regular top up in the form of showers, however on the Thursday 7th February it snowed heavily in the evening to give around 6 inches of powdery snow. The Friday and Saturday were gloriously sunny days, but there was no thaw at all until the Sunday, it gradually got milder and the snow on the ground lasted until the 13th when it was washed away, and bits of snow from nearby snowman lasted until the following Sunday (17th).

There has been no snow event since that which was even remotely close in terms of snow laying on the ground.

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i remember that saturday in december 1990...i was playing against braintree in an essex cup 3rd round replay..after a bad tempered 1-1 draw at theirs...we murdered them 5-0..much of the 2nd half was played in heavy snow...although it was dry and cold at kickoff the snow didnt really start until after half time..got heavier as the half went on...but luckly there was little in the way of wind..and the ground was still relatively wet..so it didnt start to settle until the game was pretty much over.

remember going home with my girlfriend after the post match drinking session at about midnight and it was still snowing with a strong breeze and a good 6 inches or so of lying snow.

anyone who intrested we eventually lost on penalties to grays in the semi final the following april.

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i remember well the february freeze. i had recently moved to London to start my first job and was living fairly centrally. the snow was incredible, coinciding with one of Buchan's spells, which i personally am not convinced by, but are a bit of fun. I remember trudging through deep snow in covent garden, nearly a foot of it. the lovely thing about that spell was that the snow was pure powder, blowing around the london streets. the odd thing is that the travel networks seemed to be quite well equipped. these days its mayhem here in a bit of sleet. I havent seen anything like it in London since, and i'll have probably moved from the city by the time it happens again! anyway a very memorable event